Top Tips To Preparing Your Story
| Staff meetings. Project presentations. Company events. Industry conferences. Community gatherings. Training sessions. The list of places to tell stories is as endless as your imagination. Do you need to be a great storyteller to effectively use stories? Absolutely not. However, you can heighten success by preparing how you will communicate your stories and taking into account some tips when you're actually sharing them.Selecting a story We all tell stories in casual conversations. They often spill out without any pre-planning. While spontaneity is the norm in these settings, selecting the best stories to use in more formal venues requires forethought. Here are five criteria for selecting stories:
Now what? Next, structure the story in a compelling manner (see "What Makes a Story a Story?" in this issue). If you're using someone else's story, include their name in it for attribution (if they give you permission to do so). Then practice it. Out loud. Over and over again before every time you plan to tell it. Not in front of a mirror, but in an open room. It will help you recall the story if your mind goes blank in the setting in which you need to tell it. It's happened to me! To depict various characters, face different parts of the room and alter your voice. When speaking internal dialogue, look away from those to whom you're telling the story. Experiment with various body movements, facial expressions, gestures, pacing and vocal intonations to capture the flow and meaning of the story's content. Tweak the story if certain words don't sound quite right. Gather the courage to have someone hear your rendition of the story and provide you with feedback. It's time! It may be beneficial to pause for a few moments after telling a story to let its message sink in and for people to derive meaning from it. With highly emotional stories, it's OK for this pause to last up to a minute or two. Use the time to take a long drink of water and reorient yourself! If you tell a story that has an element of controversy, be prepared for immediate reactions from those who hear it. They'll want to share how they feel or relay a story of their own. In fact, most times that you tell a story, listeners will have comments to share afterward. Build in time for this conversation. Telling stories will enhance your messages. And connect you more closely with those who hear them. You'll increase your chance of success when you take time to prepare yourself and think through the impact the story will have when you actually tell it. by Lori L. Silverman |
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Storytelling a Main Component to your Strategic Communications
Story telling is often missed when companies focus on their PR plans. But the critical component is the cornerstone to any successful company or campaign. In a world that is obsessed with traditional press releases and predictable promotions the ancient art form of storytelling adds the personal touch people are looking for.
Today's online media is just another tool to convey a message. Everyone gets hyped up on being involved in every aspect of social media they fail to notice that they are lacking the strategic message to make the tool useful. Companies today think if they have an online newsroom on their site that they are filling the social media purpose. Online news rooms are nice, but ask any journalist and they will tell you the first place they look for, "the next big headline" is in blogs. So what is a blog...its the old art form that dates back to tribal fires, epic poems, books...its "Storytelling"
I've worked for several companies during the explosion of social media, and I have to tell you that one company, that allowed story telling as part of the PR arsenal, really skyrocketed and raised a significant amount of funding. Then one day the CEO decided that storytelling was too whishy washy and he needed to focus more on "sales" speak. On that day the company lost its heart and the respect of the community. I think they are still trying to raise funds.
Its a bold step for any organization to cast aside old tactics such as press releases and try new things to capture attention. Thats why its important for a company to tell its story with appeal and credibility to its audiences. "Sell" tactics don't work in storytelling or online for that matter. The days of the salesman have significantly changed. If a company plans to succeed in this new digital age they must speak to the people not at the people and they must engage the people in conversation.
How To Incorporate Social Media into a PR Plan
Check out these sites to learn about incorprating social media into your PR campaigns.
New Media Release Group – A Google group started to discuss the new media release format with participants ranging from independent PR consultants to PR Newswire and Market Wire.
New PR – Constantin Basturea’s “Digg style” site for new media public relations news.
Workspace for Social Media Press Release (hRelease) – hRelease is a community effort to define a new format for press releases via a community standard microformat
Social Media Club – Chris Heuer’s site focused on sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media.
Social Media Press Release Template (pdf) – SHIFT Communications
Inspiration for the Social Media Press Release from Tom Foremski
New Media Release Podcast – With Chris Heuer, Tom Foremski, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz.
Web 2.0 Press Release Marketing – PRWeb’s many social media optimization tools for press releases.
Social Media Power Players – Wall Street Journal profiles the users who dominate various social media formats. Via Steve Rubel.
PR Squared Blog – “Scenes from the trenches of PR 2.0? by Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications.
Social Media Must Dos
The sheer volume of social media sites available could make a grown man or woman weep as they try to navigate the landscape and place themselves or their brand in the mix. Social Media can jumpstart awareness of your brand or it can be an enormous time waster. The key is knowing where to put your energy, how often and when to turn your time and attention elsewhere.
Here’s a quick down and dirty checklist of sites I think are worth your attention as you stake your space in the social media world.
1. Facebook: More than 200 million users. Enough said. You need to be here. You can create a Facebook page and begin inviting people to join you as friends and if you’re using Facebook for your business you’ll want to create Facebook Fan Page. For a very informative video and written instructions, there’s no better coach than Mari Smith. I highly recommend her “How to Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page video and here’s the link. http://budurl.com/z53e.
Your Facebook Fan page is indexed and is searchable inside and outside of Facebook. This means that when someone googles the topic or your name, bingo: You’ve achieved virtual visibility. If you do nothing else (and you will) create a Facebook Fan Page for your business.
2. Twitter: Six to eight million U.S. users, depending on whose stats you’re viewing. Come on. It’s 120 character microblogging. You can find the time. Note: Each tweet can be 140 characters but keep it to 120 so others can Retweet you and help your info go viral. Twitter can be addictive. It’s real time conversation with the entire world. You can easily lose your focus and participate for long periods of time with this cyber cocktail party. Set a time limit (and a kitchen timer if necessary). Start with 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at another time during the day. Share your expertise and look for others who are interested in what you have to say. Ask others about themselves. Engage, share worthwhile information, link to your website for more detailed information and stop for the day.
3. LinkedIn: You simply must be on LinkedIn. It’s the yellow pages of business professionals. LinkedIn can be a “set it and forget it” site but there’s significant value in updating regularly because every update puts you into the stream of updates on all of your colleagues with whom you are linked. It reminds them that you’re out there, doing interesting things, and keeps you and your business top of mind.
4. WordPress or Blogspot: Content is King and a blog, be it wordpress (my favorite), blogspot or another program, it is a great avenue for communicating your passion and purpose. You need to have a homebase for posting interesting and useful information in more than 120/140 characters. You can link to your blog on Twitter and Facebook to drive additional interest in your content. You’re blog can live on your website or can serve as your website, depending on your goals and the needs of your business.
5.Friendfeed: Great resource for sharing your favorite blogs and posts with all your social media sites at once. I simply love this application. You can add “Share on Friendfeed” to your toolbar and with one click post interesting information you find on the web to all of your social media site instantly. Yum! Three cheers for time saving applications.
6. Twellow and/or WeFollow: These are like the Yellow Pages of Twitter. For a minimum investment of your time, you can list yourself, free of charge, and make it easier for other people to find you. You’ll enter a few “key words” to describe your business, your service and your interests. You can also search these site for like minded people that you’ll want to follow. These are excellent resources for finding folks to follow and worth a few minutes a day as part of your twitter-follower building strategy.
7. Tweetdeck or Twhirl: For filtering the stream of noise in Twitter and making sure you don’t miss really important tweets from your peeps. Free to download and easy to learn to use, these are time saving applications that will help you take a look at your Twitterverse quickly and efficiently.
8. HootSuite: You can pre-schedule your tweets, manage multiple twitter accounts and measure your success with this wonderful Twitter toolbox. This, again, is a free application but you can choose to give a donation to help them continue to add new features. The choice is yours. Either way this will help you disseminate content, say from your blog or website, during pre-scheduled time periods throughout the day on Twitter, automatically. This is a wonderful time saver and definitely a worthy Phase One strategy.
9. Google Profile: You can now set up a google profile, similar to what you’ve already done on LinkedIn. I’ve made mine slightly less corporate and with a little more personality because I have multiple businesses and I want to engage the reader more with my personality than with my professional resume. I’ve included those links on my google profile so that information is there too. This is free, easy and indexed by google. Be there or be square. This really does seem to be a “set it and forget it” tool. If I find that it is evolving to a more social tool, I’ll visit this on a new post.
10. Technorati: If you have a blog, “claim” it on Technorati to help others find your words. Once you’re blog has passed their review standards, you’ll be indexed, an essential step toward standing out in the online universe. Technorati is also a terrific resource for finding blogs you’ll want to read and perhaps share with your Twitter and Facebook friends. This application is easy to use, takes very little time to set up, is a solid resource for content and thus makes my top ten Phase One Social Media tools list.
Messaging Workshops
A messaging workshop is designed to provide the key messages, key descriptors, methods of utilizing the key phrasing to increase awareness and provide a platform for all marketing materials for your organization.
If you want to:
Make clients feel more confident and purchase your product or service
Ensure your staff is clear on what your organization is striving for?
Garner more partners to drive more sales?
Capture influencers to recommend your show to others?
You can achieve all these outcomes if your communications are clear and concise and are tied to a consistent, credible theme. This messaging workshop can help you uncover and develop powerful messages that explain in compelling language what you do and what you stand for. As we work together through this workshop will develop coherent, effective key messages.
What is a "key message" and why do I need one?
Effective key messages help crystallize thought and opinion about your organization. The words and phrases you use in media releases, media interviews, marketing materials, web sites and sales pitches should all be based on your key messages. Key messages should be tied to the overall business strategy and support activities by marketers, salespeople and your leadership team. Key messages aren’t advertising taglines. They are bite-sized summations of more complex brand and product messages.
Kim I. Plyler, Owner
Sahl Communications, Inc.
(484) 554-5582